Who's gunna muck with me?

- After the anonymous ranty Scots poem 'Wha Daur Meddle Wi' Me?'

(based on suggestions from @realnixwilliams, @johnnypurple, @mlledelicieuse and @matchtrick)

I rent my flat, just sayin,
Not mine, and it never will be,
Still, you raise the cost – I’m stayin,
And who’s gunna muck with me?
With my iPod shoved in my bag
My flimsy clear goggles to see
With coffee I’ll rage and parade,
And who’s gunna muck with me?
Who’s gunna muck with me?
Who’s gunna muck with me?
Dude, my name is Ryan-Punch,
Who’s gunna muck with me?

Metro arseclowns, think you’re keen,
Roll out your Myki decree;
I’ll touch off once in your dreams
And who’s gunna muck with me?
Flinders Street Station, it stank,
There’d better be coffee or tea,
Degraves is my mattress, my bank,
And who’s gunna muck with me?
Who’s gunna muck with me?
Who’s gunna muck with me?
Dude, my name is Ryan-Punch,
Who’s gunna muck with me?

When music streams with my crying,
Mansell sprouts up my family tree,
We’ll stick it to half-past trying -
They'll never mair meddle wi' me.
Keep it together til land,
Tram onwards, it’s rowdy, you’ll see,
My library props me to stand,
And who’s gunna muck with me?
Who’s gunna muck with me?
Who’s gunna muck with me?
Dude, my name is Ryan-Punch,
Who’s gunna muck with me?

The beanbag room is my den
The crack of a dvd,
I’m wielding librarian pen,
And who’s gunna muck with me?
At lunch I let Beck out to wail,
Pretend there was no Scientology,
Won’t count out the times I say FAIL,
Cos who’s gunna muck with me?
Who’s gunna muck with me?
Who’s gunna muck with me?
Dude, my name is Ryan-Punch,
Who’s gunna muck with me?

My peeps still keep up the tally,
They coffee me, spring my head free,
Round Parkville, Lot 6 and Tin Alley,
So who’s gunna muck with me?
Bus home for a sleepy bed shuffle
Soft hands sprout between hip and knee
Extremities, limbs all unruffled
And who’s gunna muck with me
Who’s gunna muck with me
Who’s gunna muck with me
Remember, my name is yours,
Who’s gunna muck with me?

___________________________________________

As mentioned, today's poem is my version of the excellently shouty Scots poem 'Wha Daur Meddle Wi' Me' (Also, I love how the website is called rampantscotland.com) My version is kind of a journey through my day, because I don't fight many English marauding invaders these days. I've attempted to mirror the rhyme scheme and structure of the original, though I've played about with things a bit, as you do.

Anyway, today we had suggestions from:

• @realnixwilliams: "HANDS AS GENITALS" (!)
• @johnnypurple: "goggles" (who also voted in favour of 'hands as genitals')
• @mlledelicieuse: "the thought came to me, that u should write a poem about Beck (at least I didn't say TT...)"
• @matchtrick: "Here's your next poetry challenge then, ARPster: http://www.rampantscotland.com/poetry/blpoems_daur.htm"

I think it's fitting that this poem involves shouting out your name at the end of each verse, as my initials, pronounced as a word, often end up as my nickname (my friend Tracy always starts phone calls with "Hey, Arp." Also when we pretended to be a hip-hop crew in the library (yes, it has happened, and we were way cooler than the Lady Gaga librarians thing), my rap name was MC Arp. Anyway. Blathering now.

Wunderkammer

(based on suggestions from @johnnypurple, @kirsty_I and @suz_la)

Tiered cakes of rock, black chickens in the dining room

We slice open our hard brown bread to

Find a loaf of air tucked inside an egg.

Zoom in on mouths. There’s a mother to curate every quiver of lip.

I curl up inside them all like a clay child.

The curious noises of our teeth become trains, clickety clack.

A finger slipped along a screen

brings us to a curious place, a Hugh School.

A name that Wodehouse might have written.

Do they only teach children of a certain hue?

Or are all welcomed in a wide jellyfish hug

And led to brighter primary colours?

La parole nous a été donnée pour déguiser notre pensée

Speech was given us to (____) our thoughts.

I talk a lot, except in French lessons.

Our shade, as children, informs the stories we weave.

Every dog is a superdog, each case of nits is supernits.

We draw the letter ‘E’ like a fine-toothed comb.

Cheese slices pressed between hard brown bread

We slice open our dry-chaff schooling

To find a sheaf of wheat, waving at the sky.

______________________________________________

Today's poem is based on suggestions from three people:

• @johnnypurple: "cheese? mothers?"
• @kirsty_I: "Supernits and Superdogs" (Supernits are actually a thing)
• @suz_la: "Hugh school french class." *pause* Next tweet: "High school even." (I prefer Hugh School. It's where we all go to learn to say "Pip pip!" convincingly.)

Also, I was watching Jan Svankmajer's film Faust last night, so there's a lot of odd images clacking about in my head. The picture at the top is a screen grab from that film - I wonder if that is a real place?

Sport of the future

(based on suggestions from @quadelle, @realnixwilliams, @juliansanelli and @facelikthunder)

I run from the hail with a god, a dog.

Rain on my car is a baptism, the new me.

Inside, a china teapot ready to be made holy.

Slick wooden pencils and cool metal pens

rest easily in the groove of an old tree.

Lick the grey tip, roll the swift metal sphere on my tongue.

Make them write.

No ruler to guide the scrape of colour on paper.

I’ll gauge it true.

I’ve written 65 songs. They’re all about you.

Pull out a cup of cinnamon, smear of chilli. Spread over my words.

There’s minerals there, there’s gold.

Tai chi and chai tea, every move of limb and leaf's a

Sport of the future for the un-coordinated.

Pencil tips carved into a key, a letter ‘F’.

Maybe the world is full of food and sex and spectacle

And we're all just hurling towards an apocalypse

Going to hock our eyeballs to people overseas.

But stop at that letter ‘F’, uncorrected.

Flat shine of graphite against art's blade.

It stands a pen’s height taller than my highest guilt.

If you start out depressed, everything’s kind of a pleasant surprise.

The world is full of guys. Be a man. Don’t be a guy.

Niamh and John Cusack: Beatrix and Lloyd.

A common surname in my day.

If you start out depressed,

you don’t want to sell anything bought or processed

or buy anything sold or processed,

or process anything sold, bought or processed.

You just want to get dressed.

Screw over the strongholds of Satan with the lunatic right

Nuke it. Flame it. Destroy it.

But only in word and mind, only with pencils and pens.

Leave the rest to a rabbit, happily by an empty teapot.

A world of quiet wood and words to grow,

creaking them up fat and strong.

____________________________________________________

Today's poem is based on suggestions from:

• @quadelle: 'pencils and pens'
• @realnixwilliams:'tea! I am drinking cinnamon chilli chai!'
• @juliansanelli: 'Barnaby Joyce!!' (Geez, thanks Julian)
• @facelikethunder 'John Cusack in Say Anything?...#notreally' (oh no, really)

So:

Lines 2, 10, part of 14, 16-17, 22-23, 26-29 are quotations from John Cusack in ‘Say Anything’

Lines 12, 18, 31-32 are quotations from Queensland senator and rampant floor-crosser Barnaby Joyce.

The reference to carved pencil tips is about the art of Dalton Ghetti, who makes amazing sculptures from carving the tips of pencils into miniscule shapes. Truly, if you haven't seen them, have a look right now.

Also, John Cusack's name reminded me of Niamh Cusack, who plays Beatrix Potter in the gorgeous children's tv series. Each episode always begins the same way, and I adore the introduction where she runs through the rain home to a cup of tea, and Peter. So much wub.

In the middle like summer

(based on suggestions from my mum)

Someone’s put the screech owl on repeat;

a Wilhelm scream in compilation.

Everyone did it. Not some Orient Express malarkey,

it’s just there’s not enough murderers left

so we’re having to double up.

When did you last commit?

Joyce’s hair has always been a crime,

but no one wrote a car-crash overture for her.

The whole hour and a half could be shot

in a pub through the bottom of Weronika’s pint glass.

It’s hardly Kieślowski, but stab in some

Preisner, a fox in the hedgerow, a half of bitter,

and you’ll have a perfect tri-colour symphony.

_________________________________________

Tonight's poem is based on suggestions from my mum ("Write a poem about Midsomer Murders!"), and my overnight dreams about Kieślowski film soundtracks.

Before

She looks like someone I’ve hugged recently

Stuttering around each other in the cab

Say stop?

He brings her fingers to a full stop.

'Stop'.

The grey wall says FATQ

It’s always her, breaks the slice

of time between them.

How you doing? Still here.

Her fuzzy blonde head sleeps like my own.

Her armpit has two creases.

His hair grows into his cheekbones.

They chatter into

the best community I could ever learn

Cobbled out into mis-matched chairs

And side-striped felines.

The most gorgeous staircase

Cannot compare to the slim curve of a cat.

They step in time to a curl of

burnt brown crackle, brass door-knobs.

Then we glory

into

brown floors/red walls/stacked books/tapestry/a white tagine

Messy? You think my apartment is messy?

Every replay I look like it’s the first time

Rewind to look behind their heads

One song - but quickly. Eggshell walls of crackled paint

Meubles?

They step in perfect symmetry, tread coral boards.

They know – hold this – they have sure feet.

She only has chamomile. I feel so caffeinated.

Red walls and crooked postcards

Piles of bedroom stack up in living space.

Dying light doesn’t mean rage is forgotten.

One’s about my cat, one’s about my ex-boyfriend

Play, the waltz.

Shadow of her bicep

Strings minor chord up to c major

One single night with you, little [insert name]

Eyelids lowered against a French ‘r’

Oil paintings butt against each other

like boats in rough harbours

Let me sing, you a waltz.

I saw a triangle in her back,

An oval between buttons of his shirt

You want some honey?

Choosing music in someone else’s house

Is a gift, an offering, a threat, so intimate.

Curl of wrought-iron shadows her hair

White plastic kettle is an oddity.

Wooden hat-boxes curve her jeans

Dancing like she guest-programmed his birth.

Suburban coffee-mug has jazz

and joy in aping Nina Simone.

The rage they spent before sunrise

spins out to where we stop living like teenagers.

I will live there, lounge on stripy couches

Pause to adore angles.

Baby.

Her hips know.

Let me sing you, a waltz.

She looks like someone I’ve hugged recently.

You are gonna miss that plane.

__________________________________________

Today's poem is based on suggestions from @greenspace01 ('sanctuary, worlds within worlds'), and @TheEndeavour ('rage in all its glorious forms'). Which I have teamed with my adoration of Julie Delpy's apartment in the film Before Sunset (and my adoration of Julie Delpy in general. Honestly, is there anything she can't do?)

I wrote this while watching (and re-watching) the final sequence in that wonderful film, starting as they get out of their taxi and arrive at her gorgeous French apartment. I go to that apartment in my head, all the time. You can go there too, if you like. I'll put the spare key on top of the door frame.

Drive it away

(- based on suggestions from @snazzydee, @VayaPashos, @greenspace01, @jellyjellyfish, @slimejam, @facelikethunder, @sulphura, @matchtrick, and @realnixwilliams. Think that's everyone. Group effort, this one.)

Dig a big fuck-off drain under the whole thing.

None of us has to fight the future in this. We’ll just snap

on the latex, roll up our sleeves and

even our parents will call us Mulder.

Smashing down again. Melbourne weather, your glamour

Is washing out thin, we can’t strip this weight

from our humid heads. My elbows are sweating.

There’s a fix: make a gate out of sulphur;

A weir out of matches; a child out of stars.

Beat rain spiders flat with a cookbook.

Curl the night in bubble wrap for safekeeping

Pop a day open to find a boy,

find him every single morning

Worship his rush of joy at dawn.

Unshiftable muddiness, ineffable as the box it came in

The wet child born of flood has curls, has curls.

Dig mud out of your backbone. We’re out of vinegar to

wash the blocks bone-mean. At least the car’s clean.

None of us wants to be Archimedes’ doormat

But the Tetris effect of neighbours and wheelbarrows

Brings a new world that stays in your postcode.

Start with the gods, praise the family and their home town

Wherever it is in the sluice these days.

Report shiny thews, slice them with muscle for lunch.

Smaller victories are never mentioned in detail,

But everyone had a shovel and everyone hurt and

by curfew they beat those Buffys down.

Saved a tiny pocket of air for tomorrow’s breath.

Pindar wouldn’t want us to pin a

rhyme to a calendar or choriamb

Align gods with mortals;

seat rappers with poets. Turn them all French.

Flip back the tide with words

slap out the waves with speech.

It works like a mask, a belt, a huge sea.

_________________________________________

Today's poem doesn't have structural restrictions, because by the time I was working from 9 different thematic inclusions, my brain asploded.

The requests for inclusion were:

• Bubble wrap
• Humidity and other unglamorous weather phenonema
• X Files
• Things that have things inside them (vessels/containers)
• Thews (mighty thews)
• Pindar (I think that was a structural request, but I've kinda paraphrased his structure instead)

and finally, for all that to be rolled into the saga of a driveway being washed away in a flood.

I plundered tweet-streams for parts of this one, so if some of the words seem like yours, they probably are.

Also, first person to find the Bring It On reference gets a shiny penny.

Growl

(sort of based on suggestions from @matchtrick. With apologies to Ginsberg.)

I saw the best finds of my adoration employed by sadness, carving the empirical hatred,

bagging themselves through the ego fleets with brawn, cooking up their stagnant tricks,

strange light-headed trickters yearning for the precient malady reflection, of a sorry stiletto in the austerity of sight,

through coveting and chatter and sallow-thighed and wry sat up choking in the uber-factual snarkiness of old autocrats gloating across the slops of universities nominating the 'known as',

who cared to strain and leaven to the swell and implored imagined strangers, swaggering sentimental proofs elucidated

who glassed through machineries with salient school ties, illuminating arc and flaw and rake-like parody along the dollars of more.

_________________________________________

Bit of an odd beast, this one. @matchtrick asked for a beat poem, but somehow when I was researching I ended up deciding to make a phonetic copy beat poem out of the start of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. I'm such a hipster. Bring me my single origin coffee and my ukelele, serving wench. Why doesn't ANYTHING useful rhyme with 'jazz'?

You can read the first 6 lines I made this poem out of, here.
Also blogger is being an arse about formatting, so apologies if this post has weird line breaks/font sizes. I can't fix it without throwing the laptop across the room, and then where would we be? Up the proverbial without a brass-handled proverbial.